U.S. Pat. No. 4,250,409, which has a common assignee with the present application, describes control circuitry for controlling the state of high voltage and relatively high current capability solid-state switches such as the gated diode switches (GDS's) described in the article entitled "A 500 V Monolithic Bidirectional 2.times.2 Crosspoint Array," 1980 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference--Digest of Technical Papers pages 170 and 171. The control circuitry consists of a moderate number of transistors and a current limiter element. One problem with this control circuitry is that somewhat undesirable current levels are injected into the load switches and the circuits associated therewith because of variations in the current limiter.
It is desirable to have circuitry which performs the same basic function as the above-described control circuitry but which limits undesirable current flow into the load switches and circuits associated therewith and which requires fewer components and less silicon area for implementation.